Gerald Massey's Lectures - Society in evolution - Awardspace

type and origin are one, under whatsoever name. Consequently Pan, or Aristæus, with the
seven-fold pipe in his hand, and the sheep on his shoulders, is the Christ, the Saviour, the
Good Shepherd pourtrayed in the Roman Catacombs, instead of the historic Jesus, whose
picture is not there.
The Christ or Buddha of the Gnostics could not become flesh once for all, as he was the
supreme outcome and consummate flower of all flesh, in the culminating stage of
spiritual attainment in life, and spiritual apparition after death. The Christ being an
immortal principle, and very life itself, could not be put to death; so that "redemption by
the death of Christ" is a fundamental fallacy from the first. Here, as in other matters, the
essence of all the present writer has to say is, that a physical fulfillment is always and
everywhere the doctrine of delusion. Historic personality could not authenticate the
existence of the Buddha. It had no meaning when applied to the Christ. They alone could
accept such a version who were non-Gnostics and non-Spiritualists, entirely ignorant of
the nature of the manifestor. It was the type of immortality, not as the mummy-image on
earth, but as the starry Horus; as the Ka or glorified apparition that reappeared through
the dark of death; as the risen Christ who rose upon the horizon of the resurrection; the
Horus, whose name denotes the one who ascends as a spirit. For, the Egyptian, "only one
who comes forth from the body" applies to the spirit in life, as well as in death. The art of
leaving the body was common to the old dark races, and is practised by the rudest
indigenes of many lands. The Khonds call it the art of Mleepa or transformation. An
Egyptian artist named Iritsen (11th Dynasty) says he knows the "mystery of the Divine
Word," and "how to produce the mode (or form) of issuing forth and coming in."
Whether in this life or another, the "Wise Spirits" were all one. "He has become as one of
us" is said of Adam when he had become Dead as "Wise Spirits." It was this so-called
Magical Art of producing abnormal conditions, and the faculty of Second Sight, that
finally established the existence of a permanent individuality or soul beyond the Seven
Elementaries. And it was the mystical Christ, so established, who alone could bring
immortality to light; but not by a physical resurrection from the tomb. "I am the
resurrection and the life" applies only to the principle or spirit--the 8th, as the one that
rises again, the "only one," as the Ritual has it, "who ever comes from the body"--the
typical eternal who appears as the deathless one upon the other side of the grave! This
Christ cannot be made Historical or Personal FOR US,--only IN US! That is the doctrine
of Paul, of Philo, and the Gnostics, opposed to the Christian doctrine of the physical or
fleshly faith.
The ultimate soul, type or phase of existence, then, was not born as a mental concept, nor
as the result of an induction, nor as the dream-shadow made objective; it was practically
demonstrated as scientific matter - of - fact! The Christ of the Gnostics, of Philo-Judæus,
and of Paul, the heavenly man, or second Adam, who came from Above, was no mere
doctrinal abstraction, but the spirit or ghost that could be seen,--as it was seen by Paul in
visions--and made to constitute his own special mystery; and always had been seen by
those who possessed the second sight! even as it continues to be seen by the abnormal
seers of to-day,--which ghost, according to the evidence collected by the Society for
Psychical Research, is also visible at times to ordinary vision. In pourtraying their Ka
image of the spiritual Ego, the glorified second-self, as a type of the Eternal Being, the
Egyptians represented that which their Seers saw, and you may trust them for the truth in
this, as in everything else, they were so entirely truthful. Indeed, I think the mind of man
has never had so profound a sense of truth and verity as in the Egyptian phase. Through
life they put their trust in truth, and it was their principle of cohesion in death. The
Osirified deceased says, "I am the Lord of Truth, living it daily. I am spiritualised, I have
become a soul! I have touched truth." Their typical Eternal is called the sole being who
lives by truth. Before the tribunal of eternal truth the accused pleads that he has not even
altered a story in the telling of it! That alone was true which is for ever; and all along the